You don’t see adults on tricycles very often. So I was struck by the confident woman gliding ahead of me on the 8th Avenue bike route in Kitsilano a few weeks ago. Despite the perception of tricycles as slow-motion recreational vehicles, this rider clearly had somewhere to go. But I couldn’t resist engaging her in conversation, and she willingly complied.

When government leaders talk about improving food systems, they often don’t breathe a word about meat, dairy, and fish. That’s because animal-source foods are controversial, as I discovered in researching my book High Steaks: Why and How to Eat Less Meat (New Society, 2012). http://www.newsociety.com/Books/H/High-Steaks http://tinyurl.com/cwrryqz

The Dirty Dozen and The Clean Fifteen. If you haven’t yet heard these memorable titles, they refer to lists produced by the U.S. eco-educational Environmental Working Group (EWG) www.ewg.org, which wants to help us decrease our intake of agricultural pesticides.

To eat for health, we also need to eat in ways that are good for the environment. We can’t enjoy physical well-being if our ecosystems are degraded and buckling under climate change. As a result, numerous governments are wrestling with whether their regular nation-wide dietary recommendations should advise citizens to plan meals that cut greenhouse gases and pollution. And that is not good news for large-scale livestock and meat industries.

Once again thousands of poultry animals are dying in the Fraser Valley from avian flu. The sad news arrived in the past few days, that an H5 virus had been found on a turkey farm in Abbotsford and a chicken farm in Chilliwack. Since then those farms and at least two others nearby have been quarantined, and roughly 18,000 birds have either died or will be euthanized.

When people use the term ‘innovation,’ they’re often thinking of, and referring to, high-tech. Innovation accolades usually go to those who devise a fancy new way to engineer the natural world.

But my ideal of innovation is lower-tech. I believe that many of our solutions to environmental and social problems will involve moving away from technology and toward methodologies that rely on human — rather than computer — intelligence.

Should we eat meat? That’s the title of Professor Vaclav Smil’s 2013 book, a summary of which I have just had the pleasure to re-read on a Scientific American site. Here’s the URL (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/should-humans-eat-meat-excerpt/) but I’ll save you some time by summarizing the article as follows:

Yes, humans should eat meat – but not in the crazy amounts we do today.

Our choices affect us, each other, and the planet.

• We can eat in ways that nourish ourselves, our neighbourhoods, and the earth, by eating less meat and more locally-made and natural foods.
• We can support agriculture that uses fewer chemicals and treats animals humanely; we can urge governments to shape food systems for ecology and health.
• We can live in ways that build community.

Eleanor Boyle is an educator, writer, and facilitator of community discussions on food and health. Based in Vancouver, Canada, she holds university degrees in Psychology, Neuroscience, and Food Policy. She is the author of High Steaks: Why and How to Eat Less Meat (website). Click here to watch the trailer.